What to Listen to This Week

Listening recommendations from the past, present, Portland and the periphery.

SOMETHING OLD

Max Romeo's War Ina Babylon (1976) is one of the angriest protest albums ever made, but the singer scarcely raises his voice: He just sounds like he's in disbelief that oppressive systems like race and class are even allowed to exist. On "Uptown Babies Don't Cry," he carefully explains poverty as if he's speaking to someone who's never heard of it before. On "Norman," he castigates a playboy gambler for not giving away any of his winnings. This is reggae at its bleakest, cut somewhat by Romeo's pop smarts and the warm, psychedelic backing of Lee Perry's Upsetters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGYFobPWmck&ab_channel=MaxRomeo-Topic

SOMETHING NEW

RVDS's Moods & Dances 2021 is like Mother Earth's Plantasia on steroids—play it for your orchids and they might start fighting each other. While most ambient synth music aims for state-of-the-art home-catalog comfiness, this stuff suggests danger and adventure, and once the musician gets a crew of buddies to shout the title of "Planet Dragon'' with increasing enthusiasm, it's clear that this music can do anything and go anywhere. This is a must-listen for anyone who loves the pit-pat of old drum machines and the squeak of vintage synths.

SOMETHING LOCAL

Prolific Portland "cosmic noise" artist Pulse Emitter's first album of 2021 dates back to an unfinished vinyl project from 13 years earlier. But the artist born Daryl Groetsch is keen to emphasize that the four long tracks on Voids are not "scraps." Indeed, this is some of the most bracing music in his catalog, its long metallic tones as reminiscent of classic cosmic-horror soundtracks like Alien as the unforgiving void of space itself. If you want to blow yourself out of an airlock from the comfort of your headphones, look no further.

SOMETHING ASKEW

Ghostface Killah's Supreme Clientele (2000) is the Trout Mask Replica of rap—the work by which difficulty, impenetrability and the rewards of repeat listening are measured in its genre. Scrawled on paper sans beats during a trip to Benin, the bars alternate between cool threats and impenetrable modernist word thickets so deftly you might not even notice when one transitions into the other. It's one of the rare albums that would be just as good as a coffee-table book, though reading this stuff on paper would clarify zilch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4z1AZI2sYg&list=PL55086AB3CE6BE133&ab_channel=damirtennis